Free Will Discussion

This issue is both serious and not serious.

Let me remind you. You are living in the free-est country in the universe.

Remember not to contradict yourself. Unless it’s in the interest of a free-er argument.

The truth may be that freedom is inescapable, even in death. And that’s the really scary part.

Anyway never mind.

Some people have the luxury of actually not caring whether we have free will or not, and still arguing one way or the other.

But maybe that’s a curse, or maybe it’s a subconscious preparation for the inevitability of death by giving up physical freedom before you get there. I hope these people still exercise freely. Or it’s a yielding to fear, accepting that not knowing means never knowing, and being paralyzed from making a choice to usefully discern determinisms // without first resisting the consideration of a consistent/continuous presence of absolute freedom beyond all forms of particular ideals. //

This issue is both interesting and not interesting. It may or may not even be a good question. It may be fixed initiated in an intellectual space which is not fully genuine in its asking.

Is it a difficult question because it is a loaded question to begin with? – that is, consisting of two undefined terms, which we assume are defined in order to come to a conclusion? Both free, and will, could mean almost anything in any context.

Is it a difficult question because it is too basic to be a serious question? – that is, we can’t take the question seriously because in asking the question we are presuming absolute ignorance about something we already know in context and by personal experience.

Is it a difficult question because we would have to include too many things in order to come to a complete answer? – that is, we would need to be considering too many more variables than current science has been able to clarify, and we would need to become fully capable of knowing the absolute nature of the most fundamental constituent of ourselves in order to feel fully satisfied by our conclusion. And the reactions and interactions between all of our most consequential constituents would have to be known to be disallowing freedom, not only abstract freedom, but any of our most satisfying conceptions and experiences of freedom. We would have to find that all these consequential constituents were not working toward freedom in any meaningful way, but in fact were inert to any enactment of what could be but is not. Freedoms are what they are because of what we are aware is not, but could potentially be.

Any argument against actual freedom may be disregarding the mind’s ability to deal with a meaningful abundance of potential contexts, to work with unlimited interactive parts, unlimited array of tools and materials. As mankind as progressed, more has become possible in the human world – so we could say that actual freedom is increasing. Could that increase reach a maximum point at which we could satisfyingly declare ourselves absolutely free to achieve any imaginable or meaningful will? Having enough of something could make us free, whereas an infinite amount of the same thing could render us less free. ‘Absolutely unlimited possibilities’ may be a realm in which a higher civilization may take action, but at our stage of cultural and technological advancement we are more happy with ‘potentially unlimited possibilities’ within some limits that we can enjoy. Absolute infinity is not beyond our culture’s contemplative project of math and religion, and its conception may not be irrelevant to cognizant life’s advancing freedom, but potential infinities are enough to satisfy our current ideas of personal freedom and free enaction of will. When indefinite life extension becomes a concrete achievement of biology, technology and medicine, this potential infinity concept will seem more acceptable and useful in thinking about actual free will. As has been its tendency for all time – Life itself will become increasingly more potently effective at asserting a greater variety in potential will, than inert material consequences will be in asserting effects on life. Or the whole Earth could collapse, and we all die and god laughs at you.

“What we have now is the freedom which attends decadence, or the decadence which attends freedom..”

Some people fear breaking down this problem logically, because once they start, they feel they will have to carry the argument to the end. The end which may be infinite.

Who says they have to think about it? And why should they be able to answer the question? Is it even framed fairly?

The more reality freedom may have, the more time it will take a mind to consider its full/true existence.

Maybe I’ll commit the rest of my life to deciding whether or not freedom really exists.. I’ll only need infinitely many lifetimes to achieve this, unless it was an illusion the whole time. // It could take a finite amount of time to delineate all causal flows(leaving out the extremely distant past, which may or may not be irrelevant), but possibly an infinite amount of time to map all of their connections to the future. Which means it couldn’t be done unless it was already being done, by a willing and infinite mind.

There is an implicit agreement between those who disbelieve free will and those who believe it. They both agree that something called “Infinity” would have to be an integral part of the immediate physical cosmos and the mind of creatures, especially humans. And then the believers are challenged to prove Infinity is “real” and disbelievers are challenged to prove it’s not real, or that its possible conceptions are limited to it’s reality as just an unimaginable mathematical concept. It’s certainly not irrelevant. // Otherwise it would be easier to assume that our choices were in fact inescapably limited by their starting point, and physical contexts are ultimately not transcendable. But perhaps the nature of mind is that it must transcend matter, or else it simply is matter. And I’m never sure what “simply matter” is, especially when it’s very complex. // Otherwise the reality of will really may seem like a beast clawing its way up an invisible mountain.

Source Quotes from freewill Free Will search in video backup folder

Source Quotes from Name of God File notes

Michio Kaku: Why Physics Ends the Free Will Debate

uncertainty and newtonian determinism

— transcribe all Kaku words on free will debate

Noam Chomsky – Free Will IV

Daniel Dennett: Stop Telling People They Don’t Have Free Will

Terence Mckenna – The Human Predicament (find original without music ? )

Downloaded. upload and post? – or take only text? 4:00 ish to ending — take all to text

If we are ever to know, in order to truly know whether we have free will or not, we would have to choose to know.

What was the first entity that was conscious? Was it free? Could it commit suicide? Was it free to be conscious or unconscious? Was it forced to be more conscious than it wished to be? Was it exactly as conscious as it was functionally limited to be? Could it become more conscious? What was the context of its will and any possible purposes?

Assuming all consciousness speaks, in some “language” to itself, Consciousness says, “Here Now is What is Important. I am the purpose which is itself. To know is to be. I am that I am.” That’s what consciousness says of itself, without words.

Is a brain necessary to be simply conscious?

What is the simplest imaginable nervous system? What is the simplest nervous system that we know of?

What is the simplest possible form of consciousness? What is the most complex possible form of consciousness?

Any definition of Freedom must include the denial of definition of itself, which becomes a meta-definition in a chain of potentially infinite meta-definitions which are self-negating when wished.

Many conceptions of Infinity shares this quality of definition of being necessarily undefined. The basic word infinity could be taken to mean lacking definition. That’s the simplest definition of infinity. The most complex definition of infinity is what people use the word God to refer to.

Perhaps he is secretly an undercover Jewish Buddhist who thinks Atheism is the only acceptable form of social anarchy. That would be boring..

Or maybe Sam Harris is really the A.I. computer god from the future trying to convince us all to give up our wills to it. For efficiency!

More probably Sam Harris is more than willing to be wrong in public so that we can all eventually know what is right, or at least to provoke necessary conversations which most people are hesitating or actively avoiding to have.

Anything you learn can be expanded upon by your will. Knowledge reached by linguistic logical steps is not as restrictive as it may seem with its rules and created expectations. Words themselves were initially created in a more-than-logical domain. We are playing with elements like an artist working in a complex multimedia environment, and choice of words implies intent, as does the way we relate the ideas. Words can take on objective meaning through time only through collective decision to recognize a certain variety of uniqueness in our experience, and to save it for others so that they may pursue their own explorative discovery and progressive trajectory toward personal clarity. A clear will of seeking ultimate truth brings into being a new foundation of value in the world. Our inventions brought into manifestation are more than physical, they are a net of intelligence and always have been since the birth of our nature. Existence is not a limit to what’s possible. It’s a omni-substantial bridge, a potentially infinite series of potential infinities giving way to (or embedded in) the absolutely infinite where freedom is defined by all possible times, place, forms and experiences being equally present with the center of the living cosmos.

(a series of physical potential infinities, a potentially infinite series of physical infinities giving way to a potentially infinite series of mental infinities, giving way to (bringing into being, or the making conscious of, or the making possible of) the absolutely infinite)

The beginning thing reflects the end thing. They are both unimaginable.

“Every sentence is essentially a conjuration, and, you know, the rabbit of meaning is pulled out of, uh the hat of constructive syntax. So, uh, you-you can not have, uh, truth unless you allow for the possibility of error. You know,this is the point that illuminates why predestination is a waste of time.

Predestination is the idea that the universe is a kind of film and its running, and its all determined how it’s going to come out, and there’s nothing anybody or anything can do to affect it. God created it and its unfolding. Well the- uh [clears throat] the thing that makes predestination theory worthless in my estimation is: notice that if that’s true, then you think what you think because you can’t think anything else and that puts the enterprise of seeking truth in a preposterous position. In order to seek truth one must have the option of screwing up, and uh, then it’s the dichotomy between the screwing up and finding truth that creates the sense of dynamic, uh, existential completion.” – Terence Mckenna

You see, in a way, what science is all about is, it will tell you what is possible. If you want to know if something is possible, you ask the expert in that science.”

In other words, the limitations. To orient yourself intellectually in the third and fourth dimension, you learn the limitations, you ask science.

And finally, on the topic of discovering why things happen, McKenna again:

“But what science can’t tell you, and what is what you usually really want to know, is, out of the class of the possible, what things will actually occur? And we have no theory for this, strangely enough…A fundamentalist Christian would say ‘God’s will. Out of the class of the possible, what comes to be is God’s will.’ Well, that would be one theory of what it is that winnows the actual from the possible. A scientist would say ‘preexisting conditions.’ In other words, somehow the circumstances into which any phenomenon is born skew it towards its ultimate developmental end-state. This is almost like the law of karma: by the circumstances in which you find yourself, you’re carried forward to some conclusion that was inevitable based on that. Novelty theory is not predestination. It doesn’t say that the future has happened. If you believe the future has happened you have all kinds of philosophical problems on your hands because for truth as a concept to have any meaning, you have to have error. If you think what you think because you can’t think anything else, then what does the search for truth and meaning look like in a cosmos like that? It’s meaningless. So there must be at leastthat much freedom: freedom to err in the mind.” – Terence Mckenna

Noam Chomsky – Mind, Language, and Infinite Use of Finite Means (maybe take quotes from here)

Noam Chomsky – The Subconscious (?take a few quotes from here, transcribe to text)

review or disregard

Noam Chomsky – Thought Subconscious Free Will (in my files, also take some text from here, or embed whole)